


Bridge of Sighs

by Argyle



Category: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-24
Updated: 2005-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life keeps pace with the gondola.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridge of Sighs

And so it was that I knew Venice, a palace and a prison on each hand, though I had long ago been freed from the shackles of _terra firma_. My steps felt elevated and pure, clear across the cobbles as Sebastian and I came to linger in the cafés of the San Marco Piazza until afternoon stretched into dusk. The air was heavy with spices and dust, brine and memory, and I wished with all of the vigor of youth that the hour would span the breadth of eternity; it was only a lingering strain of prudence that inhibited my silence.

“Ought we to be getting back?” I heard myself ask as we settled into a gondola. Its body was as black as night and quite as melancholy; the silk cushions were the color of the sunset. My cheeks flushed.

Sebastian exhaled a thin plume of smoke. “Why?”

“We were to dine at eight-thirty.”

“It is really very vulgar to worry after the time, Charles,” he drawled, “and to act as an unfrocked schoolmaster when you are not one at all.”

“I should hate to upset your father.”

“Oh. Don’t worry about _that_.” His voice was crisp and cool against the languid chatter of the city, sharp as the note struck by a knife on a fine wine-glass; his lips were still sweet with the peach that he had bought from a street-vendor at noon, his breath an echo of the soft summer breeze. “ _I_ never do.”

I felt the warm, comforting weight of his hand on my own. “I know.”

The sea seemed to glow as a mirror of the sky; facing outward, moving on, there were immeasurable distances above us and immeasurable distances beneath. Shadows lengthened, draping a great whorl of darkness over the sprawling faces of the façades.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Sebastian trailed his fingers through the water; the swift grace of his wrist shattered the reflection. His hand wove through a vast collection of marble spires, all pierced with tiny lights and set upon the shining surface, and he caught my eye.

“Oh, anything.”

Sebastian lit another cigarette. “Cara has seats at the ballet.”

“Does she?”

“Yes.”

I paused for a moment, and then ventured, “It sounds lovely.”

“There will be Englishmen, weeping and clutching their hands together and wrinkling their brows in ecstasy. The only consolation is the wine served afterwards.”

“Ah.”

“But Papa has a speed-boat, of course. We might first take it out across the waves, if you’d like,” he said languidly, a glint in his eye. The sun had at last fallen below the horizon, and the world seemed laced by gold. “You’ve driven one before?”

I shook my head.

“Really, Charles. What _have_ you been doing all of your life?”

“Waiting,” I said, and Sebastian laughed.

It was madness and magnificence, and the aura of decay only served to deepen my charm. I smiled, knowing with the certainty of instinct that the rain would soon be upon us.

When set against beauty, came a whisper in my ear, what is mortality?

\------------------

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,  
A palace and a prison on each hand;  
I saw from out the wave her structures rise  
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:  
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand  
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles  
O're the far times, when many a subject land  
Look'd to the wingèd Lion's marble piles,  
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her  
     hundred isles!

Lord Byron, _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ Canto IV, I


End file.
